Wednesday, June 21, 2006

For whatever reason, The New Republic is going bloghappy this week. Posted just this afternoon on the magazine's blog The Plank is an interesting break in the story about possible links between DKos endorsements and money from campaigns -- the so-called Kosola controversy.

First, here's a catch up if this is new to you. Upshot -- Kos kollaborator Jerome Armstrong agreed to an injunction an SEC case accusing him of touting stocks on bulletin boards without acknowledging that he was paid to do so. The new info is that Kos has sent out a confidential memo to his inner circle urging them to refrain from blogging on the issue so as to "starve it of oxygen." He also tries to minimize Armstrong's culpability -- "He didn't do it but he settled it because . . ." If I had a dime for every time I heard that as a prosecutor.

Here's the money quote from The Plank:

So far, Kos's friends in the fiercely independent liberal blogosphere seem to have displayed a sheep-like obedience to his dictat. And while it's true that Kos himself hinted at the controversy in this blog post yesterday, he didn't come anywhere close to addressing the questions that really matter. You might even call Kos and company's behavior in this whole affair just another case of politics as usual. So much for crashing the gates.

Back to TNR. They have some good pieces, some bad, apparently touched off by the YearlyKos convention. All are worth a look and all are so far available without a subscription (it's hilarious that they whine about Times Select when they selectively do much the same thing.) You may or may not see some additional here about all that.